The Weekly Photo Challenge is Look Up.
Living in the tropics in the rainy season if you don’t look up, you will miss out on some wonderful surprises. Take a walk with me around our finca this morning as we look for new life blossoming in the tree tops.
I love the shade our mango tree provides, but the termite nests and the mangoes dropping like bombs on our tin roof…not so much.
The sour sop fruit is almost ready.
The first grapefruits on our young tree!
It is a good thing I looked up into the grape trellis.
The nancites will be pinging to the ground soon.
It is close to making Key Lime pie.
Our green beans wind up and up the water tower. Have you ever seen foot long green beans before?
Don’t stand under the coconut trees on a windy day.
Our jicote tree will flower soon and then we can make jicote jam. It is kind of like plum jam.
The strong winds blew over many of our banana stalks in February. But, these little ones look strong and healthy.
Tis’ always the season to look up on Ometepe Island.
When I saw your topic was “Look Up” it reminded me of our experience on Ometepe near Chaco Verde where we stayed and the nature walk nearby. We were there in April and the leaves on the trees overhead were pretty sparse so we had great views of the howler monkeys overhead. Even though it was hot, we did 2-3 walks on the days we stayed because we loved seeing the monkeys! Anita (So sorry to read of your “horrible” housesitter. Wish we could have volunteered! 🙂 )
Anita, I thought about taking more photos of the Howler moneys. They are so cute. I love watching them swing in the treetops. 🙂 I wish you could have house sat for us, too, but it all worked out well in the end.
Me again…..terrible house sitting people. What to do> you trusted them with your beautiful house and that is how they repay you. I hope they are reading this and feel very ashamed of what they have done. The nerve of them to take advantage of you like that. They should make It up to you in some way, however they can. The very least, a sincere apology.
Well, Laura, I put the blame on myself. He was a single man with many problems and I was willing to give him an opportunity to “find” himself. But, he found himself at the expense of our pets and home. Never again. We have always requested couples, and this is the first problem we have ever had. So, I let it go and we moved on learning from this experience. And our dune buggy is fixed, our cats and dog are happy, and our house is almost back to normal. We are leaving for New Zealand in November and I have lined up a wonderful professional couple. I am so excited because I know they will take good care of our house and pets.
Hi again…..you have a lovely garden. We had a creaky old huge tin roof outside our bedroom window , growing up in the Caribbean and custard apples used to fall and cause strange noises at all hours. Strange, I never liked that fruit, but I don’t think I ever tasted it. It was milk like and not to my taste. Funny, I was going to make a key lime pie yesterday, but looked at the ingredients, costed them out, and bought a tiny little pie instead. I think I was just lazy, not to mention cheap. Would love to have some of your mangoes. You can make smoothies. MacDonalds has a wonderful peach smoothie here, for two dollars. Just add some yoghurt and mix with your pulp….wow…..glad you had a good holiday. I remember going to Vegas and having the foot wide hamburger, for ninety nine cents. I am cheap…..They really lay the food on there, don’t they. It was fun. Glad you are back safely….bye Laura
Hi Laura,
What are custard apples? Do they look like apples? I never heard of them, but they sound delicious if they taste like custard. We have 5 huge mango trees, two of them are Rosa mangoes (the best) and the other three are Indio mangoes. When we were in the states, I looked for a fruit inhibitor to inject in the Indio mango trunk closest to our house. It is too tall to spray and too lovely to cut down, but the mangoes do a lot of damage to our roof and they are really not edible. I found a hormone that I could inject in the tree to stop it from bearing fruit, yet it wouldn’t do any damage to the tree. The locals thought I was crazy, but short of cutting it down, we don’t have any other options. Unfortunately, I couldn’t chance bringing it back through customs because even though it is not a pesticide, I just knew it would be confiscated. So, we are back to raking the rotten mangoes and putting them into a big hole to ferment. Now, if we could make methane, we would be all set. Lol
I love those photo perspectives~ How wonderful to be able to pick all that fruit just there on your property, yum!
Barbara, I had so much fun yesterday morning looking up and searching for fruit. The Grapefruits were really hard to see because they blended with the leaves. We still have at least ten more varieties of fruit trees that aren’t in their season for fruiting. Something is always falling here. Thanks for your comment.
Beautiful pictures. Thank you for sharing with us,
You are welcome Sunni. I wish I could send you some mangoes. We are overwhelmed with them.
I wish you could too! Yummy! Where I work I had to demo dried organic mangoes yesterday. Sold a lot of them.
Lately around here the people in the cities are spending time looking up at already tilting buildings in fear of the next temblor. Around our house I prefer to look up at coco trees and possible falling fronds. Great pictures, Debbie. ‘Thanks.
I just woke up and the first thing I read was about the twin earthquakes off the coast of Esmeralda, Ecuador. I am sick with worry for the people of your lovely country. So far, no damages have been reported. So scary! I hope that with time, you all won’t have to look up to the tilting buildings and things will return to normal.
Lovely! How was your trip home Debra? I saw some pics on fb and it looks like you had a wonderful time!
Nicole, we had a wonderful time in the states. I organized a beautiful memorial service for my mother and my aunt with lots of food, music, photos, and warm memories. The most stressful events happened at our house on Ometepe Island. We had a horrible experience with an irresponsible housesitter. Fortunately, my good friend that lives close was able to come to our house and stay for us. When we returned, we discovered that the horrible housesitter had a big drunken fiesta at our house where someone tried to hot wire our dune buggy and take it for a joy ride. We are so grateful for good friends who could help us.
Wow Debbie I can’t believe the nerve of some people! That will be worthy or maybe not of a post in itself. Did they ever apologize? Terrible!
Thank you for sharing Deb… lovely. Have a great day !
Glad you enjoyed them, Mark. You have a great day, too.
Great pics!
I call them yummy pics. Lol